India, June 7 -- A broader narrative has emerged in which Indian civilisation is portrayed not as a historically evolving continuum but as a disconnected assemblage of peoples, cultures, and traditions held together only by geography.

The public dispute over the 4,300-year-old Harappan Pashupati Seal discovered at Mohenjo-daro raises serious questions about the politics of archaeology. Fundamentally, it represents a highly visible front in a long-standing ideological war over intellectual authority and the sovereignty of Indian civilisational identity.

The controversy erupted when the Indian Ministry of Culture posted an image of the artefact on social media, identifying the central figure as Shiva-Pashupati sitting in a yogic posture, ...